MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND

"Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land ?"-MARMION.

THE stately homes of England!
How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O'er all the pleasant land!

The deer across their greensward bound,
Through shade and sunny gleam;

And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England!

Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love

Meet in the ruddy light!

There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.

The blessed homes of England!
How softly on their bowers

Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath hours! Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime Floats through their woods at morn; All other sounds, in that still time, Of breeze and leaf are born.

The cottage homes of England!
By thousands on her plains

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;

And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath their eaves.

The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be reared
To guard each hallowed wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,

Where first the child's glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!

THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE

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THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE

"I have dreamt thou wert

A captive in thy hopelessness; afar

From the sweet home of thy young infancy,
Whose image into thee is as a dream

Of fire and slaughter. I can see thee wasting,

Sick for thy native air."-L. E. L.

THE champions had come from their fields of war,

Over the crests of the billows far;

They had brought back the spoils of a hundred shores, Where the deep had foamed to their flashing oars.

They sat at their feast round the Norse king's board; By the glare of the torch-light the mead was poured; The hearth was heaped with the pine-boughs high, And it flung a red radiance on shields thrown by.

The Scalds had chanted in Runic rhyme
Their songs of the sword and the olden time;
And a solemn thrill, as the harp-chords rung,

Had breathed from the walls where the bright spears hung.

But the swell was gone from the quivering string:
They had summoned a softer voice to sing;

And a captive girl, at the warriors' call,

Stood forth in the midst of that frowning hall.

Lonely she stood; in her mournful eyes
Lay the clear midnight of southern skies;
And the drooping fringe of their lashes low
Half-veiled a depth of unfathomed woe.

A

G

Stately she stood-though her fragile frame
Seemed struck with the blight of some inward flame,
And her proud pale brow had a shade of scorn,
Under the waves of her dark hair worn.

And a deep flush passed, like a crimson haze,
O'er her marble cheek by the pine-fire's blaze-
No soft hue caught from the south wind's breath,
But a token of fever at strife with death.

She had been torn from her home away,
With her long locks crowned for her bridal day,
And brought to die of the burning dreams
That haunt the exile by foreign streams.

They bade her sing of her distant land-
She held its lyre with a trembling hand,

Till the spirit its blue skies had given her woke,
And the stream of her voice into music broke.

Faint was the strain in its first wild flow-
Troubled its murmur, and sad and low;
But it swelled into deeper power ere long,

As the breeze that swept o'er her soul grew strong.

They bid me sing of thee, mine own, my sunny land!

of thee !

Am I not parted from thy shores by the mournfulsounding sea?!

Doth not thy shadow wrap my soul? In silence let me

die,

In a voiceless dream of thy silvery founts, and thy pure, deep sapphire sky.